Israel pounds Beirut's southern suburb [video report]

Medics treat a woman and her daughter - the only two survivors of a strike on a minibus in Lebanon. Picture / Reuters

BEIRUT - Israel pounded Beirut's southern suburb on Sunday, the fifth successive day of an offensive on Lebanon, with no sign that its attacks on the Hizbollah guerrilla group and civilian installations were near an end.

The air strikes, which killed 35 civilians on Saturday, including 15 children, were meant to punish the Lebanese government for failing to disarm Hizbollah and letting it menace Israel's northern border, where measures just short of a state of emergency have been ordered.

The bombing of Lebanese roads, bridges, ports and airports, as well as Hizbollah targets, is Israel's most destructive onslaught since a 1982 invasion to expel Palestinian forces.

The attacks started after the guerrilla group's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border operation on Wednesday.

Air strikes in the early hours of Sunday damaged a flyover linking the southern suburb with the eastern part of Beirut, Hizbollah's al-Manar television reported, and the loud blasts were heard throughout the capital. Israeli aircraft have already flattened Hizbollah's nine-storey headquarters.

The campaign in Lebanon coincided with an offensive Israel launched in the Gaza Strip on June 28 to try to retrieve another captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Israeli forces clashed with militants in Gaza on Sunday as tanks moved back into the north of the Strip. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers, backed by helicopters with machine guns sending down bursts of fire, moved into farmland near Beit Hanoun, an area often used by militants for launching rockets.

Small groups of militants opened fire at the Israeli forces, but there was no report of casualties.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora repeated his demands for an immediate U.N.-backed cease-fire on Saturday. He denounced Israel for turning his country into a "disaster zone" and appealed for foreign aid.

His speech came hours after Israel bombarded ports in Christian areas for the first time and a helicopter missile hit a lighthouse on Beirut's seafront.

Israel has said the way out would be for Lebanon to implement a UN resolution demanding Hizbollah be disarmed. The Beirut government, led by an anti-Syrian coalition, lacks the unity and firepower to disarm Hizbollah, the only Lebanese faction to keep its guns after the 1975-90 civil war.

US President George W. Bush, who has declined to urge Israel to curb its military operations, said Syria should tell Hizbollah, also backed by Iran, to stop cross-border attacks.

An Israeli missile incinerated a van in southern Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the campaign.

Police said the van was carrying two families fleeing the village of Marwaheen after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes.

At least 104 people, all but four of them civilians, have been killed in the five-day assault, which has choked Lebanon's economy and forced tourists and foreigners to flee.

Four Israelis, including a five-year-old child, have been killed and 300 wounded by about 700 rockets fired since Wednesday at more than 20 towns.

The Israeli government gave authorities the power to shut schools, factories and public institutions in the north in a move that falls just short of a full state of emergency.

It also warned the Lebanese army on Sunday against shooting at its aircraft and said it would not hesitate to strike "at any party operating against it".

Italy began evacuating nationals from Lebanon. Britain said it was sending two Royal Navy ships to the Middle East for a possible evacuation of British citizens. Thousands of people have streamed to the Syrian border and safety.

- REUTERS